


When One Has Gone

by BeautifulTendencies



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulTendencies/pseuds/BeautifulTendencies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when your soulmate passes on before you meet them?</p>
<p>Even though he’s never seen the arms that wrap around him, he’s sure they’re there in a way he could never explain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When One Has Gone

**Author's Note:**

> At some point I will learn to write better. Probably.

He sees the glare of headlights and then nothing at all.

It’s turbulent, the blackness, ever shifting and hiding things, monsters, that he would never see, but knew were lurking all the same. Long moments spent in complete sensory deprivation, squeezing limbo. The pain grows hazy red, filling his mind in single thought, agony, tearing through what little is left of him. He’s ripped back to consciousness, a ringing loud in his ears, blurry faces leaning over him, the steady flash of fluorescent lights as they pass overhead. His throat is raw and dry. He thinks he’s screaming but he’s not sure.

Darkness fills his vision once more.

A small thread of light gently twists itself around his wrist. He touches it and crystal memories fall through his vision.

A kite flying in the sky, crimson contrast in the blue.

Light through crystal.

A big black dog.

Perfume floating gently on a warm breeze.

The sound of a great bell tolling.

A woman’s smile.

The feeling of laughter, pure and bursting from the chest.

Cold flecks on his face.

A stone, cold and grey against the bright grass.

The smell of autumn leaves.

A large hand reaching out to him.

Rainbow colors of a soap bubble.

A man, ginger and frowning.

A lit candle.

Vanilla warm on his tongue.

They flash faster and faster, too quick to keep track of, leaving behind only vague sensations swept over by the next. It’s too much and he drowns in them, pressing from the insides of his lungs, searing his eyes, scraping against his skin.

Glaring headlights zooming towards him.

The sensations concentrate into fine pinpricks of light in his vision, and for a tense moment between one breath and the next, he knows everything and nothing.

The world lapses once more into overwhelming confusion before he sinks again into unconsciousness. 

When he wakes once more, he is no longer in a place he knows.

He’s standing amongst scattered bags of garbage, before a small boy with wild black hair looking like he’s about to cry.

~

Even though he’s never seen the arms that wrap around him, he’s sure they’re there in a way he could never explain. The way they feel against him, strong, steady, sure. 

The first time it happens is when he’s seven, riding his bike too fast down an alleyway, and not making the sharp turn. One moment he’s thrown through black bags of garbage against a piss-stained and heavily graffitied wall, about to cry, the next he feels that cool embrace. It’s a gentle touch to his face, small hands running soothingly through his hair. It startled him, to be sure, but he accepted without question in the way only children can. He named it Bren. He doesn’t know why.

Bren became his only friend growing up. That is, if you could call Bren a friend. It was a friend only in the sense that it was the only being that accepted him fully, and in turn, Ben accepted fully back. He wasn’t a particularly fanciful kid, he knew Bren wasn’t what other children had, imaginary friends. Bren only showed through touch, in icy hands and gentle gestures, calming him. He came almost everyday, holding his hand when he walked to school, a frigid touch on his shoulder when the other children refused to even look at him. He grew used to Bren’s presence, learned to count on it being there when it seemed like nothing else would be. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he isolated everyone from himself. But Bren was easy, needed no explanation, would always come back no matter what.

It stopped one day, suddenly, unexpectedly, when he was thirteen. He remembered panicking, reaching out for something that could not possibly logically be there, yet had existed in his knowledge until that point. It sent him into a downward spiral that eventually lead to a locked door to a bathroom and a slowly disassembling razors when he was fifteen. The next touch came when he was sixteen, the metal edge poised gleaming above his marred wrist, ready to stoke downward and finally end it. A cool hand tugged gently at the razor, wiped the spilled tears from his cheeks, pulled him to a cold chest. It rocked him back and forth all night, until his father succeeded in breaking the door down. Warm hands replaced the cool ones, more tears ran down his cheeks.

Life got better. He learned to open up to his family, and when the small embraces grew less and less frequent, he knew not to question it.

He continued through high school, college, rented his own apartment. He met a girl, got married, had children, sent them through college. Got divorced. Watched his body slowly wither and fail itself as time passed.

When it was time to finally finish what he had almost completed they day he held that gleaming metal above his arm, he was ready. He was happy with what he had done in his life.

He passed on into waiting arms, colder than ice.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments give me life.


End file.
